The nation is tearing itself apart right now.  There is anger on the part of the teachers who have been hit by the govenment levies, the pay cut and the paycut-by-another-name, the pension levy.  There is anger on the part of the private sector people who, by virtue of the fact that they don’t have job security and the fact that about 2/3 of them have taken pay cuts, they want the teachers to suck it up now that job security is being taken away from them.

This is a classic shell game.  Divert attention away from what is actually happening.  Let the private sector worker tear the public sector worker apart, let fear build, because fear is important in this game and sit back and watch while everything becomes better and better for those who actually matter.

The question to ask is “Cui bono?” - To whose benefit.

It will take me a minute to explain what I mean, but this is how I see Ireland at the moment.

We have pitched ourselves as a high earning and high tech economy.  This hasn’t happened quickly enough and although we are moving in that direction, we are not world leaders, therefore something had to give.  We were building too many houses, this much is true, but if we were actually top-of-the-heap primary producers, then it wouldn’t matter much, we could all have a couple of houses and it would be OK.

However, we really weren’t primary producers.  Our software industry was engaged in large part in software localisation, not in developing the IP for being the software producers (exceptions being HAVOK, etc.). Our chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries are all foreign-owned and the profits are lightly taxed and repatriated to the mother country (they provide employment and for that we are grateful).  The rate at which we patent technology and the rate of indigineous start-ups is/was not in line with our ambitions and perceptions.

And in that environment, our investments in bricks and mortar were a distraction.  We lacked the ambition to invest in technology and perhaps, given our history, we had an attachment and a faith in the solidity of owning property that eventually turned houses into a celtic crack cocaine.

Which leads us to where we are today.  Salaries are dropping, but more fundamentally, the fear of losing a job is at an all-time high.  The stakes are high on this one.

In 1990 if you lost your job then it was a bit of tough luck and desperately disappointing, but perhaps things might improve.

Today if you loose your job, the family home might have to be sold at a loss of a quarter of a million Euro, leaving you homeless and with a huge debt.  This is an entirely different kind of fear.

So, today, the average person in Ireland is prepared to work longer hours, won’t give backchat, will work for less, will work harder and is frightened to within an inch of their lives.

And is prepared to attack the others around them if they perceive that they are doing even slightly better than them.

Two years ago, people that wouldn’t have ever dreamed of taking a low-paid teaching job or a nurses job are now incredulous that public servants want to draw a line in the sand after taking a pay cut of almost one-fifth.

It seems a loose-loose situation for public servants.  In the good times of full employment, their permanent job status had no real value and it was used as justification for their lower wages, but now that it has value, they have to take pay cut after pay cut.

The private sector PAYE worker lives in fear of job termination and religiously rips into the public sector and their ‘perks’.

All the while, those wealthy people, the people that matter, those who used to own the site of the bottle factory in Dublin and those that sold land during the boom or those that had been reasonably sensible in not overextending themselves are waiting and waiting and waiting.

Cui bono?

Soon they will get employees who are happy to work like trained monkeys and are willing to be paid peanuts.  It is the best thing in the world for them to see the private sector workers ripping onto the public sector workers - because if the public sector employees have their conditions of employment reduced, then it is justifiable to replicate this for the private sector workers.

And so it spirals downwards, with all talk of being a smart economy - which requires ambition, initiative and hunger - disappearing intothe distance like the celtic tiger we thought we had.

We’ll soon be back to the Ireland that Christy Moore used to sing about.  A land of labourers, emigrants and the downtrodden.  Cheap maleable labour, tipping our caps to the owners.

Ryanair just posted a massive profit.  That profit will now only increase, given that they will be easily able to slash salaries for their employees.  Remember when Michael O’Leary used to boast that his emloyees were all Irish?  Not anymore they are not. Though they might be again soon, when we are happy to accept salaries lower than he would have to pay in Warsaw.

Cui bono?

Here are the lyrics that the post title refers to:

When routine bites hard
And ambitions are low
And resentment rides high
But emotions won’t grow
And we’re changing our ways, taking different roads
Then love, love will tears us apart again
Love, love will tears us apart again
Why is the bedroom so cold
You’ve turned away on your side
Is my timing that flawed?
Our respect run so dry
Yet there’s still this appeal that we’ve kept through our lives
But love, love will tears us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again
You cry out in your sleep
All my failings exposed
And there’s a taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold
Just that something so good just can’t function no more
But love, love will tear us apart again